Muskets vs. Spears
Today there was a pleasant surprise and an unpleasant surprise, and sadly the unpleasant surprise ended up taking the cake. My Australians and their Environment class was canceled, but I was notified by my British friend Will that we had an 850-word paper due on Friday. Now, this wouldn’t have been too bad, but we were supposed to read about twenty pages worth of two opposing arguments and write about their differences, contrasting them. Ugh.
When I arrived home I decided to get immediately to work. After talking with friends on Facebook. And Skyping a fantastic friend for an hour and a half. Oh, and of course after dinner.
I sat down to read the article after having my two future breaks of fun-ness laid out and planned, bracing for monotonous textbook prose. I was happily wrong with my prediction. Turns out the first essay is a fantastically interesting re-examination of the history of Australia, with an emphasis on the idea that nations and individuals choose what kind of history they have without realizing what history actually took place. I came to a passage on guns, and it absolutely threw me for a loop. It’s not all that incredible or anything, but it seemed pretty profound and interesting to me. So here it is…
Taken from Rodney Hall’s essay in “The Alfred Deakin Lectures.”
“I’d now want to add the the ingredient of magic. The usual story then goes on to say that the invasion succeeded because the invaders had superior weapons. Anyone who has fired a flintlock musket will acknowledge that the spear has hugely superior accuracy and about the same range. What made the musket succeed was the factor of fear. It was magic: a bang went off over there and somebody beside you dropped dead. Tribal people had only magic by which to understand this phenomenon. Their fears defeated them, during the half century when vastly superior numbers were on their side.”
Mills, J., 2001 The Alfred Deakin Lectures, ABC Books, Sydney.
